Chinese military official calls bird flu an American conspiracy

Dai Xu, a senior colonel, blamed the outbreak on the US military, which he said pulled off an identical trick in 2003 (SARS)

A senior Chinese military official has created a furore and outrage among the country's netizens by calling the current deadly avian flu outbreak in China an American conspiracy.

Dai Xu, senior colonel with the People's Liberation Army's air force and lecturer at the National Defence University, blamed the outbreak on the US military, which he said pulled off an identical trick in 2003 (SARS).

He wrote on his micro-blog  that the new virus was another "bio-pyschological" weapon and that China should deal calmly with the problem and not be swayed by US trickery.

"Or else, it'll be like in 2003 with SARS, (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome)", which caused hundreds of death in China in 2003.

"At that time, America was fighting in Iraq and feared that China would take advantage of the opportunity to take other actions," Hong Kong based South China Morning Post quoted him as saying.

"This is why they used bio-psychological weapons against China. All of China fell into turmoil and that was exactly what the US wanted. Now, the US is using the same old trick. China should have learned its lesson and should calmly deal with the problem,� he said.

Dai's post has been shared some 30,000 times over the weekend.

While some netizens supported his remarks, most comments were critical. He had deleted an earlier almost identical post that ended with a sentence that caused even more outrage.

"Only a few will die, but that's not even a one-thousandth of those who die in car crashes in China."

"In that case, the invention of cars by the US and Germany must have been an ever greater conspiracy," Kai-fu Lee, the former head of Google China and one of the most influential voices on Weibo, quipped in a reply.

"I'm confident that the vast majority of soldiers would not endorse this," Luo Changping, deputy editor of the financial magazine Caijing, wrote in a reaction that has since been shared some 63,000 times.

"Dai must step down and apologise to the families of the deceased."

Dai was unapologetic in his reply on Sunday.

"It is common knowledge that a group of people in China have been injected with mental toxin by the US," he wrote.

"Now, a group of fake American devils are attacking me," he wrote in another post.